ar-15, 5.56x45, .223-remingtonI know that a rifle chambered for .223 can shoot .223 ammunition (but not 5.56mm, despite some claims to the contrary), and a rifle chambered for 5.56mm can shoot both .223 and 5.56mm ammunition.
Then, while shopping around for parts to build my first AR-15, I come across “.223 Wylde”. The claim is that the higher-pressure 5.56mm chambers are somehow “looser” than the .223 chambers, and thus have less accuracy, but .223 Wylde has the accuracy of .223 while also allowing for the higher-powered 5.56mm ammunition to be fired safely.
Can someone please explain to me why this is so, or else dispel my misconceptions if it is not? My own searches have only turned up marketing stuff, and I’m inherently distrustful of anything written by marketing types.
Relative to a 5.56mm NATO chamber, the Wylde chamber has a longer leade/freebore dimension, the same leade angle, and a tighter neck.
Exact dimensions for this chamber and many others can be found in this PDF available from ar15barrels.com.
Empirical evidence suggests that the Wylde chamber has reliability problems when run hard as a fighting gun, yet gun maker Mark LaRue uses this chamber (and a 1:8 barrel twist) on all of his rifles.
By all accounts, the PredatAR and OBR series of rifles are superb fighting guns, and LaRue’s reputation for quality and quality control is phenomenal.
To me this suggests there may be more to the reliability issues associated with the Wylde chambers than the chamber alone. The flip-side to that coin is that LaRue’s rifles are the only ones with Wylde chambers that I’ve heard of being successful in the world of fighting guns. Rock River Arms also uses the Wylde chamber on some of their guns, and outside the world of hobby guns and range toys, they have a less-than-stellar reputation.
In the previously linked barrel twist question, my answer was that a 1:7 twist is the best all-around twist rate. For the context of this question, I would add to that answer that a true 5.56mm NATO spec chamber is also the best all around chamber for a rifle, be it for hobby, gun games, or fighting guns. Exceptions to this would include shooting extremely long bullets which require custom chambers due to the overall length of the rounds, or chambers from makers like LaRue (Wylde) and Noveske (Noveske Match Mod 0) where their work has proven to be reliable under many extreme conditions.
Please do tell, what is this great world of “fighting guns”???? also what is it exactly that makes a firearm less stellar, often so terrible than the great warriors of the internet must call them “hobby guns or range toys”. Mil spec is mil spec. Math is a science, and money doesn’t always buy happiness. With that said, .223 wylde chambers are thought to be more accurate than 5.56 NATO chambers, and less reliable. The answer is in the math, look at the chanber specifications and you’ll figure it out. The question I have to ask you is, what are you going to use it for? If your going to use U.S commercially available ammo and are looking for the most accuracy then the wylde chamber may be for you. If not, then the 5.56 NATO chamber is probably the easiest to live with. I hope to be testing a wylde chambered DI gun against a 5.56 DI and 5.56 piston in the near future to shake out the wheat from the chaff. For what its worth, if I were to go back to the gulf, I would prefer not to carry any AR variant.
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